What do you think of Obama’s ed-secretary pick?

Obama has tapped Chicago Public Schools chief Arne Duncan to be his new secretary of education. Duncan is a Harvard grad who’s run the third-largest school district in the country for the past seven years. He was an education advisor for Obama during the presidential campaign.

From news reports, Duncan appears to be a fan of charter schools and investing in early childhood education. He doesn’t have formal teaching experience, aside from some stints as a tutor, but seems to have decent relationships with teachers’ unions.

As education secretary, one of his first priorities will be reworking No Child Left Behind:

An effort to rewrite the law, the most important statement of federal policy toward public schools, collapsed last year in the face of opposition from conservative Republicans angered over the law’s intrusion onto states’ educational prerogatives and Democrats upset with the law’s emphasis on standardized testing.

Mr. Obama has called for a thorough rewrite, but has pledged to defend the accountability provisions in the law that require schools to improve.